A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair by Jonathan Gash

"After almost twenty years of doing business on the dodgy side of the trade, Lovejoy is still a love and the joy he brings to his work is undiminished," said a recent review in The New York Times. In his twenty-first caper, mystery fans' favorite antiques dealer faces his biggest challenge ever: not just solving a murder, but also deciphering the knotty mysteries of fatherhood.

In order to find out who's been passing off phony gemstones, Lovejoy needs to trawl the London markets. In between Camden Passage and Portobello, he pays a visit to his old friends Colette and Arthur Goldhorn, but he is in for a dreadful surprise--the Goldhorn's King's Road shop has been taken over by one Dieter Gluck, a handsome and elegant thug with bad breath. Thanks to him, Colette is on the street, her husband mysteriously dead and her fifteen-year-old son Mortimer's life at risk.... He's a handsome lad, too, with a familiar face and a genius for sensing genuine articles from fake.

Lovejoy sets out to save the day, but getting on the wrong side of Herr Gluck turns out to be a very dangerous game indeed. Chock full of irresistible antiques lore and deliciously tricky tactics, A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair brings a lively new dimension to a tried-and-true series.

Jonathan Gash, best known as the creator of the character Lovejoy, is the pseudonym of John Grant. Grant was born on September 30, 1933 in Bolton, Lancashire, England. He was educated at the University of London and the Royal College of Surgeons and Physics. In the mid-1970s, Gash began writing to relieve some of the stress of his career as a physician. The first Lovejoy novel, The Judas Pair, won the Creasey Award for the Crime Writer's Association of Great Britain for best first crime novel. A number of other novels, Lovejoy's and otherwise, have followed.